Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Rules Questions => Topic started by: Yariv on June 12, 2011, 10:52:13 pm
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Anyone know how are the cards in the BM deck selected? They do not contain all cards from the sets (boxes, expansions, whatever) used for the setup, so which cards?
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You can choose any way you like to select Black Market deck cards, the rules are not specific about that.
For example, I sometimes use a copy of all cards that are not in the supply (more or less 75 cards), or randomly select 15 cards.
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BTW, Isotropic chooses randomly 25 cards for the Black Market deck.
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I'm pretty sure isotropic relies on the kingdom cards to some extent. I don't think there can be cards costing potions (or maybe alchemy cards in general) in the BM deck if there are no such kingdom cards.
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You can choose any way you like to select Black Market deck cards, the rules are not specific about that.
For example, I sometimes use a copy of all cards that are not in the supply (more or less 75 cards), or randomly select 15 cards.
Just curious, as in my household, we have Black Market, and have Prosperity and Cornucopia set to be delivered this week, how it works with that many cards in the BM deck?
Have you noticed a difference in game play with a larger or smaller deck?
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I always play with the entirety of the remaining cards. One thing I like this about this method is that everything is fleeting in the Black Market. With over 100 cards available in Black Market, each option you receive will likely not be seen again.
Although, I'm intrigued by the idea of making a 15-card or 25-card deck. As the deck cycles through, you can plan for future cards. That actually adds a new level of strategy.
I'm leaning more toward a smaller Black Market deck now. Another good reason is that setup is easier. Right now, you'd have to put a token on all victory cards just in case someone buys a Trade Route. You'd also have to get the Prizes out in case someone buys a Tournament. And I can't even remember what the rules are for Young Witch, but I'm guessing you'd have to choose a Bane card. At least if you draw the Black Market deck, you can perform those setup steps as they are needed.
How would I choose a Black Market deck? I'd randomly draw the 15 (or 25 or whatever) cards. I'd cast out cards with a Potion cost unless there was already a Kingdom card with a Potion cost; I believe this was listed in the Alchemy rules, but it's been a while and I can't verify that at the moment. But, I doubt anyone is interested in buying a Potion in the hopes of getting a card or two from the Black Market deck. If that's the case, then Potion cards are just dead space in the Black Market deck.
Come to think of it, I've vetoed the use of Black Market more often than not, exactly because I wasn't in the mood to deal with it at the time. Perhaps if I restricted the Black Market deck to a smaller subset, I would not be so eager to choose the path of least resistance. I'll consider that when I play tonight.
Kevin
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I usually use the Dominion Kingdom Deck app on my iPhone, which generates a virtual Black Market deck (which is 15 cards, I think) based on the sets you were choosing from (and, AFAICT, also knocks out Potion-cost cards if none are in the set). It doesn't do anything special for Trade Route, though, and doesn't have an obvious way to list the BM deck cards so you can tell if there's a special case in there.
Cornucopia support isn't in yet, so it also doesn't handle Bane cards for YW or Prize cards for Tournament.
(It also doesn't let you reorder cards you put back, alas.)
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I've had a lot of fun using one of the expansions as the black market deck. Prosperity is especially fun, but it works well with Seaside or Intrigue, too.
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I've had a lot of fun using one of the expansions as the black market deck. Prosperity is especially fun, but it works well with Seaside or Intrigue, too.
That's a pretty good idea. Leads to a nice flavor for the BM, and easy setup.
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I really like the idea of using another expansion as the Black Market deck. I will have to try that out.
When I play 3P or 4P games, I will usually only use three expansions at most as I think keeping the themes together leads to a better experience on bigger games. This would make it very easy to try this out and make a Black Market deck of 25 cards consisting of an entire expo.
In 2P games, I will often randomize all of my cards, but I find Black Market to add too much randomness in a 2P game to be any fun and typically don't use it.
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I always play with the entirety of the remaining cards. One thing I like this about this method is that everything is fleeting in the Black Market. With over 100 cards available in Black Market, each option you receive will likely not be seen again.
One problem doing this with Cornucopia is that you always have to create a Bane pile because there is a Young Witch lurking somewhere in that deck, even though she may never show her face.
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I always play with the entirety of the remaining cards. One thing I like this about this method is that everything is fleeting in the Black Market. With over 100 cards available in Black Market, each option you receive will likely not be seen again.
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Come to think of it, I've vetoed the use of Black Market more often than not, exactly because I wasn't in the mood to deal with it at the time. Perhaps if I restricted the Black Market deck to a smaller subset, I would not be so eager to choose the path of least resistance. I'll consider that when I play tonight.
Kevin
If you play with big Black Market decks, one easy way to set up is to use the randomizers as the BM deck. They already have one of every card, you can just shuffle together the expansions that you want. Then when someone buys a BM card, take a real one from the box so that the different back doesn't affect game play.
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It's funny when the randomizers affect gameplay. I strongly recommend it as a house rule.